


The Deft Bowman

by Schgain



Series: The Deft Bowman [1]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Autistic Character(s), Canon Depressed Character, Character Study, Depression, I only ever seem to get attached to the minor characters, Introspection, No longer canon-compliant, Special Interests, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2017-03-23
Packaged: 2018-08-09 17:30:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7810855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schgain/pseuds/Schgain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drabbles about a depressed bard and his friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

For a moment Magnus just stands in the threshold of the Void Rotunda, somehow now hesitant. The guards that line the hall behind him are anxious but they know who he is, and they say nothing. 

Johan, even pinker under the black light, bows his violin as deftly and lightly as his undulating audience. It's the same measure the Voidfish had sang before, and with every line becoming more complex, more somber. Magnus is reminded of the time he was reduced to tears in an elevator by Johan, the same stirring in his gut and the tightness of his throat. It's love, purely and simply, but also full of yearning and devotion and something Magnus can't quite name. 

When he shuffles into the room, Johan's gaze flickers over for only a moment. He doesn't stop playing until he's through, and Voidfish hums a pleased middle C. 

"Were you jealous back when Voidfish put its tentacle against the tank all nicelike?" Magnus asks. 

"Yeah. A little." says Johan. 

Magnus appreciates his honesty. "I appreciate your honesty," he says. 

"She's uh, she's really somethin', huh." mumbles Johan. 

"Yeah," says Magnus.

"I mean... And don't tell anyone I said this, okay? If you do I'l fucking throw myself out the airlock."

Magnus chuckles.

"But like... Yeah, people knowing who I am... Knowing my music... It's a real bummer that it's not realistic or nothin'. And dying forgotten is plain batshit terrifying, y'know what I mean? But I mean. I guess I've come to terms with it. The music part. I mean. She likes it, and everyone here likes it. That's somethin', huh." Johan goes to wipe his eyes and quickly disguises the motion of adjusting his beret. 

"The Voidfish has good taste, y'know? Ba-dumtssh!" Magnus pokes Johan's side. 

"Asshole."


	2. Chapter 2

Taako pops his head in. "I was right! You do live here!" 

Johan rubs his face. "Four PM is feeding time anyways, Taako. I have my own dorm and stuff." 

"Do you like.... D'you spend all your free time here though?" Taako's grin grows as he teases Johan. 

"I'm not gonna, like, privy you to my schedule so you can bother me at any hour, man." the bard pouts for a moment, but his face softens soon after. "Uh. Did you, like. Need something?"

"I wanted to tell you that I like your skirt, and you should come get lunch with me 'n the dynamic dipshits." 

Johan looks at his skirt- light pink, with a few small darker pink four-petaled flowers embroidered on it. 

"Oh... Yeah. Thanks, for the compliment, and the invitation, but I gotta pass." he waves a hand dismissively. 

"Whats with the.... Flowery motif, anyways? It's on your beret and everything." Taako points, and Johan takes it off to show the pattern better. 

"Because like... There's a species of jellyfish whose subgenital pits are right at the top of the bell- that's the jelly body, and they make a really cute flower shape which is tinted pink through a larval crustacean diet. And I thought my hat looked like the bell, so... Yeah." the corner of his mouth twitches a little bit. 

When Johan looks back up at Taako, the wizard's eyebrows have shot up to his hat brim. He's also got that shit-eating grin. Johan, thankful that it's hard to see in the low light of the room, flushes. "What?"

"That's really neat, Johan!" Taako says. "Do you know a lot about jellyfish?"

"Medusae." 

Taako gives him a blank look.

"They're uh, they're not fish. So calling them jellyfish is kind of a misnomer and all. Their name's medusae. So yeah. I guess I know about 'em. I'm like the resident jelly expert or something." he gives a laugh that sounds more like a wheeze.  "Is that how people know me? The Jellyfish Guy? That's a bummer." 

Taako thinks about it. "More like the sad bard guy."

Johan rubs his face with his beret before putting back on his hair. "Thanks for that, Taako."

"What else do you know about jellies, Johan?" 

It's almost as if a switch is flipped- Taako watches Johan grow animated, hands flapping and talking nearly as quickly as his mouth is going off. He points to the various parts of the voidfish anatomy, and even shows Taako some of the planetside jellyfish specimens he's been keeping, lets taako poke their syrprisingly firm bells. ("They're not hollow," Johan says.) He talks about venom and "nematocysts", about eyespots and algae stomach pouches ,about the difference between lappets and oral arms. For this short while he seems new and alive, talking against the background of the Voidfish' song.


	3. Chapter 3

"Oi, Johan!" Merle calls. He pops his head into the Voidfish chamber, where there is no sign of the bard. He frowns and rubs his whiskers for a moment, scanning the low light of the room for anything that could signify the presence of Johan.

"Do you know where he is?" He asks the Voidfish jokingly; he is not expecting a response.

However it seems he's going to get one-- the Voidfish raises a single lappet to point upward. Merle gets the feeling that Johan hasn't even been down here yet, but the Voidfish doesn't seem too concerned about it. It's hard to read it in general, but it certainly doesn't seem upset. 

"Well, thanks, I guess." says Merle, and heads for the elevator once more. 

(It only occurs to him when he's stepping out of the shaft that he could have asked one of the many guards lining the hall.)

Finding Johan's room is somewhat difficult- it's not with the Regulators' quarters but on the same floor as the Directors, which gives Merle the sense that Johan is actually much more of a big shot than he lets on. When he's on the floor, it's pretty easy to see which one is Johan's: it's painted a dark purple and has a "KEEP OUT" sign written on it in bright red letters. When Merle ignores this sign for grabbing the doorknob, the contraption gives a sharp squeal, like an unkind pull of a violin bow on a high note. It's enough to make Merle recoil in shock, and in the moment he takes to recover the door opens a crack and Johan's eye stares back at him.

"Ever hear of knocking?" he snaps, and mutters something that sounds suspiciously like 'even worse than the Director..." before squinting at Merle. 

"Well, I noticed you weren't in the Voidfish Rotunda and I thought I'd check up on you, is all." Merle halfasses, inwardly cringing at his own lack of excuse. If Lucretia were here she'd tell him all about how he's trying to make up for walking out on his kids by being a busybody to anyone who seems like a child to him. And she'd be right, too, dammit. 

Johan mutters some swear in Elvish that Merle doesn't quite catch. He frowns, but Johan steps back and opens the door further. "Did _she_ tell you to do this?" The inflection on 'she' leaves no doubt in Merle's mind as to who he means. 

"No, no, no! None of that. Just out of the goodness of my heart." He steps into Johan's room- what an incredible glimpse into the bard's psyche!

"This evangelism, then?" Johan asks, slumping back to his bed. His room is messy, but not in the same way as Lucas' private chambers. Where Lucas' room was that of a scatterbrained, irresponsible dickhead, Johan's room is the kind of messy that one can only achieve if they quite literally cannot take care of themself. Merle can't tell if the floor is carpeted or if it's just layers and layers of dirty laundry all the way down. Where clothing isn't scattered there's compositions and ill-kept instruments, food wrappers and empty cans of juice. 

When Merle looks over to Johan, he is pointedly avoiding eye contact. He's fiddling with the bangs that cover his one eye, and is so seemingly engrossed in this activity that Merle decides he's going to do him a good turn. The cleric isn't really one for selfless acts, but he knows what it's like to live in a mess because your life is a mess, so without even saying he's going to do it, he scoops up as much of Johan's clothes as possible and puts the pile in the hallway. It takes several trips to get even the floor visible (Hardwood, and thoroughly scuffed) and upwards of an hour to get even started on the countless looseleaf sheet papers scattered. He can hear Johan sniffling for most of it, but eventually the bard comes to sit next to him on the floor and begins putting the papers into stacks. 

"Hey, Johan?"

"Yeah?"

"What was your life like before you were here?" this probably isn't polite small talk material, but if Merle isn't a busybody he isn't anything, and he thinks Johan might need to get this out of his system before he combusts. This room is a fire hazard anyways. 

"Uhhh. My mom fucked an elf dude, he stayed until I was born, and then predictably she never saw him again." 

Oh. Great. Merle's throat grows a lump. 

"I was shit-awful at anything academic, except maybe magic. And I had to pay the bills so I got a job transcribing sheet music for rich kids at Jordan College, and eventually saved up enough for a fiddle. The rest is history." He shrugs. 

"Y'know, if you ever need help getting your space clear, you know where you can turn, right Johan?" 

Johan stares at him for a long time, and the corner of his mouth twitches.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tend to write these bits late at night, and it shows. 
> 
> The first few snippets are mostly about characters and their points of view regarding Johan. This, I think, is the most obvious of them, considering how I write the Director.

Lucretia has found that as Director of the Beureau of Balance, she wants for nothing. 

Her organization is young- it is her, Leon, and Maureen for now, but it will grow. She will have her men, she will protect this earth. 

She finds the boy, like she finds all her workers- when she needs them most. 

He's crying, and he's gripping his right eye and isn't letting Leon look at it- there's black oil scumming his hair, and he's thoroughly drenched. When she asks him what happened, he won't even talk to her. When Leon pulls his hand away from his face, he bites, but not before the Artificer can see exactly what's wrong with it. 

Something rancid in her awakens, something she should not have, something she has beat down for years. She dares not even mention its name. 

But it comes and it settles all the same in the back of her mind and the base of her heartstrings, and when they take the Voidfish they take him too. 

He doesn't want to be paid, he says. Demands it, really. Trying to give him anything he doesn't think he deserves is met with any range of misery, from sullen sulking to tears to lashing out. Lucretia is frustrated herself, but she always notices that even his outbursts are inwardly directed. 

She finds him under the desk she'd bought him, sobbing into his knees, and asks what he'd like them to do instead. 

He can't talk- there's something blocking the words from getting out, something that when he opens his mouth he can only say some word in Elvish she doesn't quite catch, a phrase he repeats to himself and twitches his fingers. He finally grabs a sheet of paoer off his desk and a quill, and scawls down an address on it. The ink has barely dried before he thrusts it at the Director. She's taken aback, but takes it all the same.

A week later Miss Triegelmann starts recieving seven hundred gold pieces twice a month. There's no return address, of course there's not, but sometimes Johan sneaks letters in with the gold and sends her thoughts and the hope that she's doing well. 

It's been years, and Lucretia can't count them now or she doesn't want to, but she sees Johan- short, chunky, with dark unwashed hair with uneven bangs that he clearly cut himself in his bathroom mirror to cover his bad eye. She's busy now, and her bureaucracy has expanded significantly- she cannot waste her time on any one employee. 

Johan is an employee, she tells herself often. Johan is an employee, and their relationship is professional, she tells herself when she forces her way into his room with a tray bearing soup and orange slices after he hasn't been to any meal in the mess hall for three days. Johan is her responsibility only in that he is an asset, she tries to convince herself when he brings her a bouquet of flowers, when he comes into her office to rant and rave, to throw his hands up in the air only to sit and sulk in her big overstuffed armchair until she pays attention to him.

She should not be feeling so bittersweet. She should not find herself guilty of a crime she did not commit-- she did not take this boy from his mother, and she has no right to fill that void for him anyways. 

So, Lucretia watches from afar, as she is wont to do, even as Johan withdraws further and further into his room. It's only a few feet from hers, only a step down the hall and a knock at his door. He wouldn't deny her entry, so she must deny herself this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "What makes something like me? I look at genes all day long, and never do I see the blueprint of sin. I could blame the Germans, but in truth, I did not find tormentors in the Prison Camp, but kindred spirits. These children I brutalized have awoken something inside that for most is beautiful and natural, but in me, is an abomination… my maternal instinct." - Brigid Tenenbaum
> 
> I find myself coming back to this quote my friend has supplied me with when writing Lucretia. I like to think that this too, shows.


	5. Full Fathom Five Thy Father Lies

Lately the townsfolk have been saying that there's something in the lake. 

Johan doesn't see much point in running around playing football or archery, nor coddling poppets or spinning tops. He's too busy now with his music, writing his own compositions and studying the terminology. Mom can't afford a tutor, so playing on an old, out of tune fiddle while sitting on a rock by the lakeside is the best he can do.

Not that he minds it, either. The lake is still and glass-grey, reflecting the uniform overcast sky ahead. The wind is right and the birds have retreated to the coniferous forest on the other side of the bank for the morning, and for all evidence it seems the day is his. He puts his fiddle under his chin, raises the bow, and--

"Jojo!" 

Johan barely conceals the loud noise of annoyance he so desperately wants to express. Instead he pulls fiddle from chin, and tucks both it and its brother under his arm before turning. 

A group of children, the oldest three years his lesser. Some bear grins and other bear worries. 

"Johan, you know there's something in the lake, right? Fischer went out to check the nets and there was somethin' big and nasty floating right below the boats." says one of the girls. She's smiling, and Johan is made to think that she cares less about his safety and more about his gullibility. 

"Yeah! He said it had a thousand thousand of arms!" pipes up a boy.

"There's nothing in the lake." Johan rebuts. "It's just a story to keep your parents from havin' to save you from drowning and all if you go too deep."

"There is so something in the lake! It's made of stars!" says another, younger boy. He sounds like he believes it though, and tugs on Johan's skirt. "You can practice at the church if you want peace and quiet." 

Johan snatches his skirt out of reach. "Why are you guys tellin' me this now?"

The oldest girl gives a mischievous look and grins. "Mam says the town crier saw a group of folks in blue come by the lake last night to see what's wriggling." 

Johan sighs and avoids calling her mom an idiot for believing the self-titled town crier. "If it'll, like, give you peace of mind and stuff, I can show you that there's nothing out there." With his good mood ruined and a day of playing his new piece out the window, there's no reason for him not to walk the fifty feet down the beach and push his mom's boat into the water and step in. 

The children huddle off the rocky beach, on the lawn that they perceive as safety, while Johan floats ever closer into the lake.

From here, he can't hear the children. The water is still and silver, and when he looks over the side of the little rowboat he can see a carp and their whiskers mouth at the wood, looking for morsels. 

Hell, if it's always this nice out here, Johan doesn't see why he doesn't come out here to practice.

"JOHAN WATCH OUT!"

He turns around just in time to see the tentacle (for that is what it must be) slam into his boat and throw him into the drink. He gets one sharp intake of breath before he hits the water nose first-

"ow," he thinks.

\- and is yanked under. Something has tangled around his legs, preventing him from kicking upwards to air, to freedom, to safety. If he didn't know that it would kill him, Johan would scream. Instead he opens his eyes, and stares in both wonder and fear at what lies below him. 

(Later, someone will tell him that 'wonder' and 'fear' when felt together is called 'awe', but he doesn't know that word yet, and cannot tell when he has been completely and fully awestruck at the sight of what must be the most beautiful thing that he's ever seen.

It's stars.

Thousands of them, millions, whatever unit is bigger than that, swirling in a beautiful spiral. They are all glowing, but at seemingly random intervals they light up brighter, like some song expressed only in shades of blue and pink. And in the light shining on him by the glow of the creature, Johan can see now that what has tangled around his waste is indeed a tentacle, made of rippling tissue not unlike a ribbon. It snakes up from around his legs to his waist and holds him, and for a moment the boy is too stunned to struggle.

Between the lights and him, though, is something that breaks his reverie: his fiddle, now thoroughly water damaged and sinking into the impossible deep below him. Another tentacle reaches out and curls daintily around the pegbox. 

"No!" thinks Johan in his frenzy-- if he loses this fiddle, he will not get another one. For some reason, though, the creature stops. It doesn't do anything for a moment, and without a face Johan cannot tell what it might be thinking. If it can think at all. 

The fiddle is released and floats, somehow, upwards. Johan can't follow its journey, and only hopes that it can be retrieved by someone after he is eaten by whatever this is. 

The tentacle that had held the fiddle does not retreat to the depths below, but instead, floats to Johan's face. His struggles begin anew against the hold of the arm curled around his middle, kicking at nothing and feeling the burn in his lungs get even stronger. Despite his flailing, the tentacle comes closer and presses it against his right eye.

Air or no air, Johan _screams._

There is nothing but water flooding his lungs, his already pathetic attempts at freeing himself turn sluggish, and his eyes stare unseeing into the deep while images flood his mind. 

Stars, spaces, circles of glass and crystal, stories so long forgotten that even listening to them would not hold. Something clawing at the very edges of the mind, black and slick with death and desire to consume. He's screaming, and he continues to scream even when the tentacles pull away and he is yanked harshly up out of the lake onto a bright white boat with a silver steampipe. He vomits twice, once water and once something viscous, rich and strange. And he won't stop shaking, babbling to himself, crying. He's clutching that eye, blood letting between his fingertips. Johan can't even hear what the woman is saying to him, but it must be urgent. He whimpers, and falls over.

And then he wakes up at home. 

His throat feels raw, and his eyes sting, and he can't see out of the good one. He feels like maybe he should be more traumatized and sick than he feels. The act of revelation, to his knowledge, does not come easily to those with small minds. Somehow he clambers out of bet and stumbles his way to the washroom. The mirror is tarnished silver but it does its job, and when Johan looks at himself, his knees weaken.

His right eye has been replaced with a glorious pink and blue star, like the ones he saw in the lake. After rubbing it a few times the effect does not go away, but slowly sight restores in it, and when he finds himself confident of his depth perception he makes for the stairs and creeps down them. 

"Madame Triegelmann--" says the woman who had yesterday saved him in a hushed, impatient voice. 

"Miss Triegelmann, thank you. Or Lupita, if you'd like." says his mom, somehow both cordial and stonewalled.

"Miss, your son has made contact with something necessary for our studies, and we would truly like for him to join our Bureau in an apprenticeship to help us with our mission." 

"Whatever was in the water then, I don't want my son anywhere near it!"

"We can guarantee that the medusae in question was in no way hostile to your son. In fact, he might be the key to communicating with it after it had opened its mind to him-- ah, Master Johan." the woman turns to look at the stairs, and for the first time Johan gets a good look at her. 

She's tall, far taller than his mother, and has stark white hair. But they share the same dark skin and the same smile lines around their eyes, and she smiles a knowing, if tired, smile at him as he slowly creeps down the stairs. 

"The Madame Director here--" begins mom, but Johan cuts her off.

"I wanna go," he says. 

Both the Director and mom raise their eyebrows. Only the former smiles.

"Then," she says, "I believe you will be needing this." And she holds out her hand- in it, a silver violin emblazoned with four triangles made into a diamond shape.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BIG OL CHAPTER WARNING FOR ATTEMPTED SUICIDE.

"Hey, Johan?" Magnus asks, idly toying with the arms of one of his many stuffed animals. Johan, higher up on the messy pile of soft things that covers the plane of Magnus' bed, stops in his idle ukelele-ing to look down. 

"Yeah, man?"

"You know the gunk that's in the Voidfish tank?"

"Yeah?"

"Did anyone ever try swimming in it?"

Johan looks down at his ukelele. "I dunno." 

 

 

It would be easy. 

Johan is standing barefoot at the very rim of the tank, looking into the waters below, and for a moment he's at home all over again, looking into the lake, waiting for nothing to happen. But as soon as the deja vu comes it's gone, and Johan takes particular note of its fleetingness- it might be the first thing he's felt in a while.

He doesn't know how Lucretia can cope with no one ever remembering her, and she's still alive. The people who aren't inoculated cannot begin to even comprehend her or the good she's doing. Johan knows that if he dies, that's going to happen to him too, and he thinks that if this thought hadn't been sitting like lead in his mind for the past forever, it might have bummed him out. 

It would be easy, he thinks. Better now than later. 

He's not scared of drowning, even though he should be. There are probably worse ways to go. There are probably faster, less solipsistic ways to go too, but this has been Johan's only act of rebellion, this is his only selfish thing he's granted himself-- and he knows, truly, that it's selfish, because after him they'll have to bring in another artist to feed the Voidfish, and maybe they'll cope better, and maybe the bureau will even like them better, and the whole place will be better off without him, in the one place he'll ever be known, and--

He hits the water chest first and it knocks out what little breaath he'd been holding, and by the time he tries to inhale he's already sinking down down down, and he gets a lung full of ichor, and he feels sick and scared and panicking, like every emotion he hadn't been able to feel for the past few years is flooding him, a deluge of neurochemicals triggered by the Voidfish's toxins. 

Medusae and hydrozoa release toxic barbs reflexively, Johan thinks, the sting has nothing to do with electricity. 

He opens his eyes. The water doesn't sting even though it most certainly should. He watxhes the lip of the tank drift far away, far upwards. He's drowning, and his vision becomes blurry around the edges, and his fingertips are cold, and his body wants to struggle, to fight upwards but there's only water in him, and his movements become sluggish. 

And then a soft pink oral arm reaches out to him.

"No!" Johan thought-speaks, but the Voidfish doesn't listen. The Voidfish never listens. It raises him up up up, back to the lip of the tank, and pokes its gellatinous bell out of the water for Johan to lay on, to cough out the water. He's still conscious somehow, probably something elven in him that keeps him alive longer in crises, and idly he calls Summon Instrument. One of his many fiddles settles next to him, and he clutches it for comfort. 

"I'm sorry," he says to no one but the Voidfish. He lets out a hiccuping sob, and the Voidfish plays a little high note that suggests it understands. "I'm sorry." 

It hums a long, long note that slowly etches its way into a song, weaving old comforts that only Johan could understand. He rolls onto his side, still holding his violin, and opens his bad eye. 

The Voidfish sings four notes.

"E-flat, A, F, E." Johan takes a moment to think. "Yeah, I'm safe now. I'm sorry, I won't do it again." he doesn't say anything for a long time.

"Hey Voidfish? Can I stay here till morning?" 

The Voidfish sings a new pattern.

"A, A, F, E. You really gotta stick to one cryptogram method, y'know? You're using the French one, so..." he chuckles weakly, and coughs. "Home... Sure."

"Hey, Voidfish?"

"I love you." 

and the Voidfish sings EAAE, and Johan falls asleep atop its bell.


	7. I Cried For A Solid Twenty Minutes

fuck you griffin


End file.
